


Days Without Rain

by amhrancas



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, Kanjani8 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, old fic is old
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2018-10-16 13:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amhrancas/pseuds/amhrancas
Summary: To Tadayoshi, Ryuhei has become synonymous with “rain,” his family always arriving just before the planting season, staying throughout the summer, sometimes into the fall. The arrival of Ryuhei signals the arrival of the rains, and another year of prosperity.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [diefleder_tey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diefleder_tey/gifts).



> Written for diefleder_tey, for the 2013 je_otherworlds exchange. The setting is basically any nondescript village during the time spanning the Nara and Heian periods (710-1185AD) and plot was largely drawn from the legend of the Ryuenji dragon and looping Typhoon’s Summer Home endlessly for days and days and days. Huge thanks to track_04 for beta-ing and additional input <3.

For a farming community, rain is everything, the very pulse bringing life to the earth. Without the rain the rice will wither and die, in turn taking the lives of the people and the village itself. Ohkura Tadayoshi had lived his entire life, all seven years and eleven months of it, having this mantra drilled into his head over and over by both his father and all the other farmers in their village. The entire year revolved around the rice fields and their planting and harvest seasons, but without the rains there would be no rice, and so every drop from the heavens was something to be cherished and welcomed with gratitude.  
  
“Gratitude my foot,” Tadayoshi grumbled to himself. “I’d sure be grateful for some rain right about now!” he barked under his breath, looking around quickly to make sure no one was around to hear his complaints. The spring was already incredibly hot, and there was no breeze to speak of to bring respite from the stagnant, humid air. It was as if the dense, tree-packed mountains and hills surrounding his village were swallowing up every wisp of wind before it could make it down onto the terraced plain where they lived.  
  
He was going to be eight years old soon; wasn’t it time they stopped giving him the baby work? His brother was only a year younger than him, _he_ could do the stupid weeding. Everyone knew that patching up the earthen dykes around the paddies was a much cooler job, and one that was reserved for the adults in the village. Tadayoshi frowned even more fiercely as he worked on a particularly stubborn root. _Stupid, stupid weeds._  
  
“Hey!” Tadayoshi jerked his head up, shaken out of his thoughts by the sudden interruption. Across the field he could make out the figure of a boy racing towards him in a zig-zag pattern from the direction of the tree line, waving. “Hey there! Do you wanna play?”  
  
As the boy swooped closer, Tadayoshi could make out his features. He was taller than Tadayoshi, his hair a slightly curly mop that had been cropped fairly short, a length that made it impossible for the boy to pull it back from his face, dark brown curls of hair plastered to the sides of his sweat-streaked face. Tadayoshi self-consciously checked his own hair, still slicked back into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck.  
  
The boy came skidding to a halt a few feet from Tadayoshi and his face lit up with a smile.  
  
“I’m Ryuhei! Do you want to play? What’s your name?”  
  
Tadayoshi blinked at the boy’s forwardness and stepped back a pace to regain his bearings. Who was this strange person, aside from just “Ryuhei?” He stood there with such an eager and expectant look on his face, waiting for Tadayoshi to reply.  
  
“Ohkura. Ohkura Tadayoshi.” He offered, unsure of what else he should do, deciding to just follow the stream of conversation for now. “Is Ryuhei your family name?”  
  
“Nope. Everyone just calls me Ryuhei, though, so you can too. Tadayoshi, huh? That’s kind of long. How about I just call you Tacchon? What are you doing out here?” The boy looked around the half-cleared field and then down to the overflowing basket at his feet. “Are you weeding the field, want some help? Are you going to grow rice here?” His questions and comments came out so fast that Tadayoshi had a hard time keeping up.  
  
“‘Tacchon?’ I dunno…”  
  
“If I help you it’ll go faster and then we can play. I’ll do a good job, I promise! I mean, I’ve never done this before, but I promise I won’t be a bother…” Ryuhei’s voice dropped off a bit at the end, an uncertain expression creeping its way across his face. Strange though he might be, Tadayoshi certainly wasn’t about to turn down an offer of help, he decided.  
  
“Sure! I’d really appreciate it. Let me show you how to grip them so you get the whole root first, then you can try a few, okay?” Ryuhei’s face quickly morphed back into his wide smile, his eyes crinkled shut into half-moon shapes and his chin jutted out a bit, making a comedic display of his face.  
  
There weren’t a lot of other kids his age to play with in the village. The closest was his brother, only a year younger, but no one wanted to have to play with an annoying younger brother. All of the other children were closer in age to his youngest brother, only a year old. Whenever he would ask his mom why there was no one else to play with, she would just laugh a little and pat him on the head, saying, “I guess you two just came a few years too early for the baby boom, honey. You’ll be okay, playing with your brother isn’t _that_ bad, after all, right?”  
  
_It certainly was_ , Tadayoshi thought to himself. Maybe this kid was worth the effort, he decided, watching the boy’s overly animated face as Ryuhei continued to chatter on about something that Tadayoshi had forgotten to pay attention to. He couldn’t be worse that his brother, and maybe he could keep him all to himself—his very own friend that he wouldn’t have to share.  
  
“What were you doing out there?” Tadayoshi asked, nodding his head in the direction of the trees and the upper terrace that Ryuhei had been racing across. Both of them lay sprawled across the top of the earthen dam separating the final paddy they’d finished clearing from the one next to it.  
  
“I was practicing being a dragon.” Ryuhei replied in a matter-of-fact tone.  
  
“You’re weird.” Tadayoshi laughed. “But you’re also funny. I like that. Much more funny than my annoying brother,” he quickly added as the boy’s face began to fall again. “So why a dragon?”  
  
“Why _not_ a dragon?” Ryuhei replied.  
  
Tadayoshi thought for a minute before answering. “Honestly, I can’t think of any reason why not a dragon.”  
  
“Well, there you go.”  
  
They both allowed the conversation to lapse as they stared up at the fluffy clouds tracing across the sky. _No rain in those clouds_ , Tadayoshi thought, still longing for a reprieve from the heat of the sun.  
  
“Your family are farmers, then, Tacchon?” Ruyhei said after a few minutes of silence, more statement than question.  
  
“Yeah. They’ve always lived here, it seems. Rice is what we do. ‘Feeding the people of this village and the province is an important duty, Tadayoshi. We have to take care of the fields daily and make sure that the reservoirs are always full. And always remember to be thankful for the rain; you never know when it will fail to come.’” He parroted his father’s usual speech about the key role their jobs played. He wasn’t quite used to this new nickname, and he rolled it around in his head some more to get a feel for it. _Tacchon_.  
  
“He’s right about the rain, you know,” Ryuhei said, sitting up now and crossing his legs over each other, narrowing his eyes at the clouds as they drifted away from them and up the flank of the mountains. “It’s an important responsibility.”  
  
“You mean praying for it? I guess so. The village heads and monks are always making offerings at the temples, things like rice and sake.”  
  
“Sake’s good. They should leave more sake.” Ryuhei continued glaring at the clouds, as if willing them to do something. “My father likes sake.”  
  
Tadayoshi wasn’t quite sure where to go with the seemingly random line of thought, so he decided it was a good time to change the subject, adopting Ryuhei’s rapid-fire tactic for questioning. “How about you, how old are you? Do you have any siblings? What do your parents do?”  
  
“I’ll be ten in the fall, and no, no siblings. It’s just me. And my parents, nothing much I guess,” Ryuhei said, a little more softly, his eyes growing distant again. “I don’t really know. I don’t see them much.”  
  
“Ehh? ‘Don’t see them much’? But you live with them, don’t you?” Tadayoshi asked with an uncertain laugh, suddenly not so confident of the answer he’d be given in return.  
  
The boy paused a moment before stretching his face back into a sudden smile, eyes crinkling closed. “It doesn’t really matter where they are, they’re boring anyway. You’re much more fun, Tacchon!” Ryuhei jumped up from the ground, brushing the leaves off his clothes. “Wanna be a dragon with me?” He flexed his fingers into a mimicked pose of a dragon’s three-clawed feet and let out a growling roar.  
  
“You’re not a dragon, Ryuhei-kun.” Tadayoshi laughed, standing up as well.  
  
“Sure I am!”  
  
“Yeah, then where’s your treasure hiding? Better yet, make it rain. Right now.”  
  
Ryuhei just smiled at that, spreading his arms out wide, hands still hooked like claws, and resumed racing across the raised paths once again.  
  
  


ヽ｀、ヽ｀

  
  
“OoooOooh~ who’s she?” Ryuhei’s voice cut through the air, startling Tadayoshi out of his thoughts. He spun around quickly, almost tripping over the hoe in his hands in the process.  
  
“You’re back!” he yelped excitedly, his voice cracking on the last syllable, face flooding with color.  
  
“I am! And don’t change the subject,” Ryuhei teased, swinging his arm up over Tadayoshi’s shoulders. “She’s cute, where’s she from?”  
  
“A couple of towns over, her parents trade with us. And she’s no one, really. When did you get back?”  
  
“Just now, actually.” Ryuhei decided to ease up a little on his friend and picked something else to taunt him about. “So what’s with the voice, Tacchon? I thought you’d outgrown that, you’re fifteen now—”  
  
“Oh shut up already.” Tadayoshi shrugged himself free of the weight of Ryuhei’s arm, his face turning an even brighter shade of red. “I have to get back to work,” he gruffly snapped back, deliberately keeping his voice low. “You coming?”  
  
“Always.” Ryuhei skipped along behind his friend, singing a made-up song about Tacchon and a mysterious girl.  
  
“Don’t make me shove you into the mud, Ryuhei.”  
  


ヽ｀、ヽ｀

  
  
“I’m not sure I like Tadayoshi being around that boy all the time.”  
  
Tadayoshi had been drifting off to sleep, lulled along by his parent’s low conversation, but the sudden mention of his name had him wide awake and listening attentively. They were talking about Ryuhei. It had been a couple of weeks since he’d first met the boy while pulling weeds, and he’d been down to play and help Tadayoshi with his chores every day since then. It had never occurred to him that Ryuhei could be a problem.  
  
“I don’t know—” his father began to respond.  
  
“I mean, they never really come out of that house on the mountain, do they? His parents? At least not that I’ve ever seen. No one else from the village has seen them either. And where did they come from, Tadashii? We’ve lived here our whole lives and have never seen anyone up there before.” His mother’s voice was heavy with a concern that Tadayoshi had never heard from her before. Was there something wrong with Ryuhei and his family? Even now, thinking about it, he couldn’t think of anything aside from him just being a little odd, but he liked that about Ryuhei.  
  
“It’s very strange. I’m just not sure if I feel comfortable having Tadayoshi playing around with that child—”  
  
“He’ll be fine. It’ good for him to finally make a friend, don’t you think? He seems like an earnest child, maybe some of that will rub off on our son. You saw how he all but begged me to be allowed to help with the planting, and that ultimately worked out.” His father laughed, thinking of the number of times Ryuhei had wound up face-first in the mud while trying to figure out how to navigate through the paddies. His mother sighed, and murmured her consent. Tadayoshi finally let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and allowed himself to drift back to sleep.  
  
  


ヽ｀、ヽ｀

  
  
There was little else quite as exciting to Tadayoshi as the flooding of the terraces in preparation for planting. The first rush of water racing out through the sluice and into the paddies was always an exciting scene. Eventually, the fields would be filled with a rich mud deep enough to cover his knees. This year he was distracted, constantly looking around for any sign of his friend. Ryuhei was late this year. The past three years, he had returned well before the flooding began, but this year there had been no sign of him or of any activity in the house on the mountain.  
  
“I wouldn’t worry too much, Tadayoshi.” His father walked up and clapped a reassuring hand on his shoulder, having taken note of his growing agitated state. “With the weather being so off this year maybe they just fell behind in their usual journey?”  
  
“Yeah, maybe,” Tadayoshi muttered to himself.  
  
But his father had been right. A few weeks later, Ryuhei greeted him at the edge of the trees, sporting a new, ridiculous looking straw hat that dwarfed his head. The hat was the first thing Tadayoshi noticed; the second was how tired his friend looked, despite his obvious attempts to hide it with his enthusiastic smile.  
  
“Sorry I’m late.” He ducked his head in an awkward apology, not offering up anything beyond that.  
  
“Yeah, okay. It’s not like I was worried or anything.” Tadayoshi surprised even himself with his curt delivery. Had his friend’s tardiness bothered him more that he had realized?  
  
_Whatever._ he thought, shaking off the concern. “You look like hell. And that’s a stupid looking hat, you know,” he shot back, making sure to keep his tone lighter this time as they started to make their way back towards the village.  
  
Ryuhei just grinned and pulled the edges down to his shoulders while he walked. “Isn’t it, though? It’s great.”  
  
“You’re such an idiot.” Tadayoshi laughed, shoving him playfully on the shoulder. At least this guy never changed. Ryuhei released the brim of his hat to properly shove him back, allowing for the rising wind to catch hold and make off with it.  
  
“Ahh! My hat!” The straw hat took to the wind and floated on the air before dropping with a delicate _plop_ right on top of the water-logged field. Ryuhei chased it, right on its trail, finishing with a dramatic leap to grab it before it hit the ground, only to miss it by inches, landing with a much less-delicate _SPLAT!_ , face-first into the muddy paddy.  
  
_Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh_ Tadayoshi repeated the mantra in his head as he made his way over to the edge of the field, before finally dissolving into giggles at the sight of his friend emerging from the muck, completely dripping with the thick mud, face blank with surprise at his condition. Slowly, he made his way over to the edge of the bank and offered his hand to help pull Ryuhei out.  
  
“Careful, the grass is slicker than you’d thin—wait—WOAH!” Tadayoshi got the warning out too late, frantically windmilling his free arm in a split-second attempt to regain his balance before sliding down the bank and landing with a splat of his own into the mud next to his now-extra-sheepish looking friend.  
  
“Oops.” Ryuhei grinned down at Tadayoshi’s scowling face.  
  
“I repeat, ‘Idiot.’” Picking himself up out of the mud, he reached down into the mud and pulled the sandals off his feet, tossing them up onto the bank before climbing his way out.  
  
“Ahh! My shoe!” Ryuhei cried out in dismay as he pulled a now bare foot out of the knee-deep mud. “It ate my shoe!” Frantically, he reached around in the spot where his foot had been, trying to find where the thick mud had pulled it off.  
  
Tadayoshi sprawled out on the dam, letting the mud covering him dry. “You never learn, do you?” He laughed to himself, focusing on the constant rattle and drone of a cicada in the distance, sounding over and over again, standing out from the surrounding rise and fall of a chorus of _uweeeeee uweeeee uweeeeee_. Summer could officially start now.  
  
  


ヽ｀、ヽ｀

  
  
“It’s not stopping, is it?” The sounds of individual drops were quickly being swallowed up by the _shaaaaa_ of the rain as it increased to a steady downpour. This was what they had been praying for. The drought had hit the region suddenly this year; a few weeks after Ryuhei had first shown up, the rains had just stopped coming. The priests, monks, and elders had begun to wonder if the dragons were angry with their village, if they had done something to displease them.  
  
“They’re not mad at the village, Tacchon,” Ryuhei reassured. “Not any of you guys at least,” he muttered to himself, brow furrowed with concentration as he looked back up the mountain.  
  
That night he stayed out in the fields, staring up at the mountain as though willing something to happen, but Tadayoshi could only guess what. He’d never really paid much thought to what Ryuhei did after Tadayoshi had headed to bed, but that night he took note, wondering if his friend would still be out there in the morning when he woke.  
  
Early the next morning, the clouds began to build behind the mountain. They sat there, growing darker and heavier, advancing slightly, and then seeming to retreat, as though they were hesitant to pull themselves over the mountain and flow down over the plain. Tadayoshi walked over to the large shed next to the terraces where all the adults had gathered to watch the clouds. The air was tense with uncertainty and it made him nervous. Spotting Ryuhei sitting over by the end of the platform, he hurried over and sat next to him.  
  
“You look exhausted; did you sleep at all last night?” Ryuhei just grunted an acknowledgement, his eyes fixed on the mountain in the distance. For an hour they sat there in silence, everyone watching the clouds and waiting for them to break past the mountain. Finally they began their advance, rolling down the mountainside with a blast of cool air sweeping out before them. The rain had started a few scattered drops at a time, before gradually increasing to its present rate.  
  
“This should help the fields, right?” Ryuhei asked hesitantly, eyes still fixed on the clouds as they continued to roll off the mountain. Tadayoshi had lost track of how long he had been sitting there, but it was well past noon now.  
  
“It should, if it keeps up like this at least.” Tadoyoshi nudged Ryuhei’s shoulder and gestured toward where his parents and the other adults had gathered to sit out the storm. “Look at their faces, they’re relaxed and laughing. My dad was saying a little while ago that the reservoir was filling back up nicely. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine.” The concerned expression on his friend’s brow broke momentarily, a crooked smile spreading as Ryuhei took in the light mood under the awning.  
  
“That’s good, then,” he replied softly before once again returning his attention to the line of clouds overhead, drawing his knees up under his chin. Tadayoshi studied him for a moment before mimicking the older boy’s pose, searching the clouds for something that he wasn’t sure he would see. Sometimes, he had found, it was just better to let Ryuhei be Ryuhei and not ask questions. The answers usually turned up eventually anyway, and besides, thinking about it too much was just too much effort. Tadayoshi bit back a yawn that was fighting to get out, the steady fall of rain like a lullaby drawing him down into sleep.  
  
“I wonder if it’ll keep…” the drowsy words were swallowed up by a full yawn this time, “keep raining… tomor…”  
  
Ryuhei glanced over to look at Tadayoshi. The boy was asleep, head pillowed on his arms and knees. He smiled and reached over and ruffled his hair a bit before turning back to the clouds.  
  
“Nah. Tomorrow’ll be clear, I think.”  
  
  


ヽ｀、ヽ｀

  
  
Tadayoshi looked out across the golden fields as the autumn sun inched past noon and began its journey to setting. He reached down and scooped up the next sheaf of rice, swinging it up over his shoulder as he carried it back to the threshing platform.  
  
For as long as he could remember, threshing had always been Tadayoshi’s favorite part of living in a rice village. He found the repetitive motions- swinging the sheaf of rice back over his head and then forward again, crashing against the wooden slats of the truss with enough force to pop the rice grains from their stalks, scattering onto the large drop cloths spread below. As a child, he had commented to his father on the similarity of the motions to those of the village taiko drummers as they pounded out their rhythms on the feast days, a thought he still carried today.  
  
After a few hours of working his way through the stacks of rice, he decided it was time for a break from the heat of the sun, signaling the okay to the younger children to start gathering up the rice grains from this batch for winnowing. He sauntered over to where Ryuhei was sitting next to the sheds, looking tired and much older than his nineteen years, huddled under a heavy shawl.  
  
Tadayoshi could no longer ignore the effect that this village was having on his friend. Year after year, the drought ravaged the region, and yet somehow their village had managed to produce prosperous yields each season. The monks gave praises and increased offerings of gratitude to the dragons at their temples, but Tadayoshi knew it wasn’t their distant and mythical dragons that had been saving the village year after year.  
  
Sitting down next to his friend, he tossed him a flask of sake and saucer. “How’s it going old man?” He asked half jokingly, trying not to focus on Ryuhei’s worn out figure and the heavy circles under his eyes; the time that it took for him to recover after the rainy season was growing longer and longer.  
  
“Oh hush. I’m not even twenty yet.” Ryuhei joked back, his disposition unchanged through all his weariness, as he happily poured out a dish of the clear rice wine.  
  
“Yet.” Tadayoshi snagged the flask to pour his own drink. Raising the dish he toasted to his friend. “Next month, right?”  
  
“Yup.” They sat in comfortable silence after that, both drinking and watching the sun inch its way closer to the horizon.  
  
“You’ll be leaving soon, won’t you?” It was already much later than Ryuhei had ever stayed with them at the village. Tadayoshi had never outright asked his friend about it, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep coming to them like this.  
  
“Yeah.” Ryuhei quietly agreed. “I’m not sure if I’ll be back. I know you’ve noticed. I can’t keep up this form anymore.” He turned his head to meet his friend’s steady gaze. “I can’t continue to bring the rain to you like this, Tacchon.”  
  
“I know.” Tadayoshi reached down and poured out two more drinks for them. “I know,” he whispered, turning his eyes back to the sun.  
  
  


ヽ｀、ヽ｀

  
  
The thunder began rumbling behind the mountain early in the morning, and by afternoon the clouds had blanketed the plains. Tadayoshi walked across the earthen dam, a young boy laughing from up on his shoulders.  
  
“Rain is everything to us,” he explained to his son. “It’s the very pulse bringing life to the earth. Without the rain the rice will wither and die, in turn taking the livelihood of the people, and with that, the village itself.” Just then the clouds broke, allowing the rain to fall.  
  
Setting the child down, he lifted his face to the sky, welcoming the cooling wetness as the drops began once more to heal the dry earth. “Welcome back, my friend.”  
  
“I am happy to be back, Tacchon. It has been too long.”  
  
Tadayoshi whirled around expectantly, searching the tree lines and fields for the figure of his friend, but there was no one there, just the rustling of the wind through the leaves and a flash of golden scales racing up the mountainside.


End file.
